Early in the writing of A Strange Companion, I realized that Gabe would die in a climbing accident. I had a vision of Kat and Gabe climbing together, of Kat scrambling ahead of him, showing off, and of Gabe falling. The details of that particular scene have changed over the various rewrites, but I always knew that Kat would be a climber.

The problem was, I knew very little about climbing. My nephew is an accomplished climber, but as such, he is always off hanging from rock faces around the world and therefore hard to pin down for research. So when a coworker mentioned that her daughter climbed, I asked if she’d be willing to (pardon the terrible pun) show me the ropes.

We met up at our climbing gym (video above) and she gave me a tour, while I struggled to remain standing upright on the heavily cushioned flooring. She explained the difference between bouldering and climbing, showed me the equipment, and demonstrated her technique. I asked endless questions, which she patiently answered and even shared some of the many ways an inexperienced climber might come to an unfortunate end. I appreciated her generosity and her candidness about how it feels to climb.

But to really understand Kat, I knew I had to try it for myself. So, the following week, I signed a waiver holding the gym blameless for anything untoward that might happen, rented a pair of shoes, and took to the wall.

Ordinarily, you’d climb with a partner, one of you climbing, the other “belaying”—holding the rope in case you fall. As I was alone, I had to use what’s called an autobelay. Were I to fall, this nifty device would engage, grabbing the rope, and lowering me safely to the ground.

One of the gym trainers explained how it works. He had me climb to a height just above his head and demonstrated the move.

I was not fine. I did not relax as instructed. I did not let go of the wall and consequently I ended up in a most ungraceful heap at his feet.

We tried it again and the next time I landed, but I still wasn’t entirely convinced.

Regardless, off I went, reaching for handholds, following the pre-set route, and making my way up the wall. It was exhilarating. I could see how people become addicted to the sport. It’s like a ballet, a combination of agility, grace, strength, and strategy. It’s also a bit of a rush. Before long, I found myself at the top of the wall, about 30 feet above the ground. With the autobelay, all I had to do was let go, fall backwards, and allow the mechanism to lower me down.

I glanced over my shoulder at the wall opposite, where a fellow climber reached the top of his route, leaned back, and sailed in a perfect arc to the ground. He made it look easy. I checked below me to make sure there was no one in my landing zone. I took a deep breath, and then…

…There is no frigging way I am jumping off this wall.

I couldn’t do it. I had visions of not jumping back with sufficient conviction and slamming against the wall, or getting my foot tangled in the rope and descending head first, or of the trusty autobelay malfunctioning and me plummeting to the ground in a tangled, broken heap.

So, I climbed back down the way I’d come up, and spent the remainder of my hour happily climbing up and down the same patch of wall and hoping nobody noticed.

But my research mission gave me a lot more than I had bargained for. I’d gone to learn how to climb, but I came out with a new understanding of my story. My fear and lack of trust changed the trajectory of my book and made me understand what I was really writing about: how important it is, in climbing, and in life, to have the courage to let go.

This week, I finished the last big revision of A Strange Companion. This means that the story currently on the page is the story that will be in the finished book. I won’t be cutting or adding scenes, no new characters will appear, and I won’t suddenly change the ending. I sent it off to my editor, who will help me knock off all the rough edges and make my prose sing. After that, the book will be laid out and proofread within an inch of its life. And then my novel will officially, finally, be finished!

Which means it’s time to start on something new.

I’m excited about diving into a new project. Revising a book is a bit like running around the same dirt track, moving, discarding, and adding stones on each lap. But the first draft of a book is an adventure into the unknown. Even with a complete story in mind, or at least a rough map of the route ahead, the writing always delivers surprises. Sometimes it’s a member of the story’s supporting cast, who wanders on to deliver one line that changes everything for the main character, leaving me with no choice but to write the bit-player a bigger role. That happened with Aiden in The Smallest Thing. He came out of a writing exercise, didn’t even say a word, and won himself a key supporting role in the story. In A Strange Companion, it was a decision Kat makes late in the story that was unexpected, but inevitable. That’s the fun of early drafts.

The question, though, is what to write now?

My head is swirling with ideas. I have about 50 pages of a novel I started last year about a girl, Grace, who saves someone’s life and becomes and unwilling celebrity. I like that story a lot, and I think it has legs.

But then there’s Anna. She often makes herself known when I do writing prompts, and she has a lot to say about living up to other people’s expectations. I like her a lot.

I have a stack of unfinished short stories calling to me, enough for a collection, and an entire contemporary romance series unfolding in my mind and on paper. There’s a potential sequel to A Strange Companion and “the book about the war” I keep promising my mum I’ll write one day, plus several more stray odds and ends of ideas with potential. That’s a lot of stories rattling around in one brain! So how do I decide what to work on next?

Anthony Doerr, Pulitzer Prize winning author of All the Light We Cannot See, talks about his story ideas being like pots of stew bubbling away on a stove. He stirs this one a little and then that one, and keeps them all simmering until one begins to boil up and lets him know it’s the one that requires his attention.

I’ve been doing that a little myself, working on some of the foundation work for my stories, exploring the characters and finding out who they are and what stories they want to tell. This exploration is the part of the creative process I love the most, when I have carte blanche to write anything I want.

I could tinker away at all these ideas forever, but at some point, one will have to become the focus or none will ever get written. So for the next couple of weeks (while I recover from my editing deadline), I’ll stir away at my pots, tasting and testing. And, hopefully, one story will speak to me more deeply and the characters will become more vivid. And at that point, I’ll commit.

I’ve been nibbling away at the first draft of a new novel and it’s brought to mind a road trip I once took.

At the end of my first year living in the States, a “gentleman friend” and I took a cross-country road trip. We had seven days to get from LA to Chicago in time for his aunt’s wedding and my subsequent flight home to England to complete my final year of college.

I had a bucket list of places I really wanted to visit en route: Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, Monument Valley, Yellowstone, and Mount Rushmore. I also had ideas about other spots that would be fun to see: Zion National Park, Hoover Dam, Dinosaur National Monument, Four Corners.

So, we packed up his Mustang and off we went, aiming for the big attractions, but adapting our route on a daily basis. We did Vegas, the Hoover Dam, and Grand Canyon. We skipped Zion for Monument Valley and headed to Four Corners, the only place in the U.S. where the corners of four states come together. I wanted to drive up through Colorado along Million Dollar Highway so that (being an engineering student at the time) I could nerd out and get a photo of Engineer Mountain.

I checked all five items off my main bucket list and arrived in Chicago a day early after torrential rain ended our sightseeing. Along the way, I collected all kinds of experiences that hadn’t been part of the original plan, and it’s those memories that have stuck with me far longer than the big attractions.

I had hoped to see a bear in Yellowstone, and did, but I wasn’t prepared for the sight of a giant moose peering at me through the car window. Nor was I prepared for how amazing it would be to see a full dinosaur skeleton in-situ. At a restaurant adjoining the nastiest motel in Idaho, I had the best trout I have ever tasted, plucked fresh from the nearby river. I learned the skills needed to make tuna sandwiches at 70 mph, that if you go to South Dakota during Sturgis, you shouldn’t expect to find a motel room within a 100-mile radius, and that Mustangs are not built for sleeping in.

Arriving at Mount Rushmore, I was dismayed to find it covered in cloud so thick I couldn’t even tell which direction to look. I bought an ice cream and stood around with a couple of thousand disgruntled bikers until, suddenly, the clouds lifted to reveal the faces of the presidents. A collective gasp spread through the crowd, each of us—gritty biker and wide-eyed student alike—appropriately awe-struck.

Which brings me back to the first draft of my new novel. I know what this book is about. I know a lot about my main character, Grace. I know about the woman who will come into her life, seeming to have the answer to her problem, but who will make things a whole lot worse. I know that Grace’s aunt and brother will play key roles in her story, as will her parents. And, because I am the god-creator of this world, I know some of the main events that will need to happen for Grace to get her big life lesson.

But I don’t yet know what side-trips the story will take or where they’ll lead me, what surprises, good or bad await Grace, or what images readers will remember long after the book is finished. But I’m looking forward to finding out.

There’s a school of thought that says: When you start to feel afraid of taking a leap or making a change, that’s when you know you’re making the right decision. I’m choosing to subscribe to this school of thought this week, because I’m starting to feel nervous about an upcoming leap of faith.

A couple of months ago I had a brilliant idea. You know the kind I mean. It came to me in an instant and I immediately wondered why I hadn’t thought of it sooner. I began thinking about this idea all the time and planning out how it would work. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a really great idea. So, I told a couple of people and they thought it was a good idea. So I told a couple more. And before I knew it, I was committed.

Then this week, things started to get real. The pieces of my plan began clicking into place, money changed hands, and I passed the point of no return, or at least the point of no return without humiliation. Suddenly, I was really nervous.

All the reasons why this was the best idea I’ve ever had suddenly got a little fuzzy at the edges. I woke up in the night with a list of all the things that could go wrong, all the reasons why this was a stupid idea, and I knew I had to make a decision. I could:

Call the whole thing off, cut my losses, and go back to my old safe, but ineffective, way of doing things.

Put it off a couple more weeks, give myself some time to firm up a few more details and mitigate some of the potential disasters.

Pinch my nose, close my eyes, and leap in feet first, hoping that I’d figured out quickly how to swim.

I’ll admit that all these options looked good, but finally, I made a decision. The only way I would ever truly know if this was the best idea since sliced bread was to commit and go for it.

So, here goes…

Next week, Wednesday July 27, I will launch my new serialized novel, A Strange Companion. I will publish a new chapter of the novel every single week until I get to “The End”, sometime in early 2017.

I’ve never done anything like this before and honestly, it goes against all my beliefs about how to go about publishing a book. I’m afraid it won’t be good enough. I’m afraid people won’t like it. I’m afraid I’ll get to Chapter 5 or 10 or 20 and realize I started in the wrong place or that there’s an important character or set-up that really needed to appear in Chapter 7.

Regardless, I’m doing it.

If you want to find out a bit more about this story, go to the book’s spiffy new web page. You can also subscribe so I can land in your inbox next week and bring with me Chapter One of A Strange Companion.

Since we humans first began gathering into social and familial groups, we’ve used stories to create a sense of community. Early hunter-gatherers shared tales to pass along information, traditions, and important lessons.

In this fascinating Life Science article, Campfire Tales Served as Early Human Social Media, researchers noticed a big difference between daytime and nighttime campfire stories told among a tribe of Kalahari Bushmen. While the daytime conversations were made up of only 6 percent stories, the rest being complaints, gossip, hunting plans, and jokes, once the tribe gathered around the nighttime campfires, 81 percent of conversations were stories.

The stories passed along information about tribal customs and ceremonies, as well as warnings of dangers, such as the story of three bushmen killed in a fire. The tribe also used stories to pass information to younger generations.

Modern Stories

Even today, we find our way around in the world and understand who we are through handed down stories. I heard stories about my aunt who emigrated to Australia by boat in the 1940s, which helped me understand why I seemed to be the only person in my family to move far from home. I recently learned that my habit of dragging my husband on long, under-prepared hikes comes not from my dad, as I’d always believed, but from my mum, who had the same habit.

As a child, I learned about the dangers of electrocution, of hot cooking oil, of crossing the street, not from formal lessons, but from stories told by others. More recently, my social media feed has bombarded me with a million things to worry about, everything from terrorist attacks to falling off a cliff while playing Pokémon Go.

From my own writing, I’ve discovered I am not alone in my experiences and I’ve come to a deeper understand of myself. Even when I make up stories in my fiction, I often find myself digging into into my own past and learning about myself from the way my characters behave. It’s one of the many wonders and pleasures of telling stories.

As you think about the stories in your life, what important wisdom would you pass along if you had the chance to sit around the campfire with your younger self?